Layer cake with colourful frosting

First, make the cake sponges. The recipe is for one sponge. In the video, three sponges are used. Make one sponge at a time. Whisk egg and sugar to an airy mix, mix flour and baking powder and sift it into the egg/sugar mix. Fold it into the mix.

Butter a springform tin and line the base with baking paper. Bake each sponge at 180 degrees fan for 25 minutes. Let the cake sponges cool off completely.

Now, make the vanilla custard. Split the vanilla pod and scrape out the seeds. Mix the vanilla seeds with a bit of sugar and put it in a pot with eggs yolks, sugar, cornflour, and vanilla sugar. Whisk together, and then add milk. Heat the custard slowly while always whisking it until the texture is creamy.

Pour the vanilla custard into a bowl and cover it with clingfilm. Lay the clingfilm right on top of the custard to keep it from forming skin. Put the vanilla custard in the fridge. When it is cooled off completely, whisk it briefly with a hand mixer before use.

Now, prepare the berry compote. Split the vanilla pod, scrape out the seeds and mix them with a little sugar. Put vanilla sugar and the scraped pods in a pot. Add berries, lime zest and the remaining sugar, and bring it to a boil. Remove the vanilla pods. Make a thickening of cornflour and water and add this to the compote in the pot while stirring.

Prepare the frosting for the cake. Whisk butter and icing sugar until it turns white. Melt the white chocolate and whisk chocolate and lemon zest into the frosting. Put the frosting in the fridge. If the frosting later becomes too soft to work with, it is because it has become too warm. If this happens, put it back in the fridge for a while, and then whisk again until the texture is good.

You can now stack the cake. Trim the sponges neatly at the edges with a knife. Make an outer ring of frosting on the bottom sponge to keep the filling in place and stabilize the cake. Spread the berry compote on the sponge. Then, spread the vanilla custard on top of the compote. Put the sponge with filling in the fridge, until the frosting has set. It will take about 10 minutes. You can now make the next layer the same way.

When the cake is stacked, and the filling is set, you can start frosting it. Take half of the frosting and split it into smaller portions. Colour each of the smaller portions with food colouring powder by whisking it in the frosting. Put the bowls of coloured frosting in the fridge. After a little while in the fridge, the colours will intensify as the food colouring powder is dissolved. If a colour gets too intense, you can always mix in a little more uncoloured frosting.

Using a large spatula, cover the entire cake with white, uncoloured frosting. Take the bowls of coloured frosting out of the fridge and leave them on the counter for approx. 10 minutes until the texture is good. It should be airy but still have some hold to it.

Place the cake on the cake stand you wish to serve it on. Decorate the cake with flowers and leaves of coloured frosting. Place a bit of the colours at the time on a small cutting board. The edges of the cutting board make it easier to control the frosting. Use a little spatula to “paint” flowers on the cake. In between decorating, you can put frosting and cake back in the fridge for a little while to the texture does not become too soft.